Although it often draws from a very personal source, over the last few years Monira Al Qadiri’s work has come to incorporate larger political and historical ideas. As a Kuwaiti she feels a sense of anxiety over the impending collapse of her country’s oil wealth, as the nation-state built on fossil fuels will soon find itself to be unsustainable.

Al Qadiri’s 3D-printed oil drill heads are silent witnesses to activity that is hidden and invisible. The inner-workings of the petroleum industry are usually concealed from the public, who respond with amazement and fascination when they are finally revealed. Simultaneously these sculptures remind us of Kuwait’s now defunct pearl diving industry: Al Qadiri discovered that pearls and oil have the same dichroic colour spectrum, placing pearls on the light and oil on the darker side of the scale. Through the use of these colours she attempts to create an aesthetic and historical bond between the pre- and post-oil eras.

The national past, personal present and imagined futures become intertwined in Al Qadiri’s practice, as the works project themselves into a future without oil, reflecting back on it like an ancient relic from time immemorial. (AM)